Mobile telecommunications networks are generally divided into cells, each cell comprising a base station for communicating with mobile terminals within the cell.
Therefore, the base stations generally comprise functions for monitoring and controlling the quality of service and the load.
In WCDMA networks, the UTRAN comprises one or more base stations controlled by a radio network controller (RNC). According to the standard, the RNC is logically divided into two nodes: the Controlling RNC (CRNC) and the Serving RNC (SRNC).
The CRNC is concerned with resource control, that is, keeping the use of resources at a low level without compromising the quality. Resources include all hardware resources in the cell, and also, for example, capacity, interference and encoding. The SRNC monitors and controls the quality of service for each radio connection, including power control, Block Error Rate (BLER), Bit Error Rate (BER). It also keeps track of the type of communication going on in each connection, for example, speech, video or data communication. The SRNC comprises functions for instructing a mobile terminal to perform a handover if the performance becomes too poor. The handover can be performed either by switching to another channel in the WCDMA network or by changing to another network, for example, GSM.
If more than one RNC is used, the RNCs also comprise a third logical node, the Drift RNC (DRNC).
The load in each particular cell should be controlled so that it does not become too high.
It is an object of the technology disclosed herein to enable a method and apparatus for controlling the load in a particular cell.